Economic problems and the far right threaten the whole of Europe. Labour’s isolationist approach must change‘There ought to be not only a national esprit de corps, but a European esprit de corps.”This plea by the renowned barrister and lord chancellor FE Smith – who became the first Earl of Birkenhead – was made in the wake of the devastation caused by the first world war. Birkenhead, a friend of Churchill’s, died in 1930, shortly before the rise of Hitler and the subsequent outbreak of the second world war. Alas, no European esprit de corps in the 1930s! Continue reading...